Talk:The Priory of Sion in the Da Vinci Code

NPOV?
What happened to a neutral point of view?

Can anyone be specific about the POV problem? Does anyone object to removing the POV banner? --SV Resolution(Talk) 20:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The POV problem is that a fair amount of the text in the article is someone's personal analysis and opinions on the matter. If you need specifics, look for any sentence containing the words, "I think". There's a fair amount of them.   Sophus Bie  (talk) 04:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Plantard
Is it a coincidence that Pierre Plantard 'created' the Priory of Sion, and supposedly one of the Merovingian bloodlines in the novel is Plantard? Cao Wei 22:48, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Gnostic Gospel Reference
I am removing the reference to other gospels as it doesn't fit with the subject of the article. Also, the reason that there are only four gospels is that the other "gospels" were second century pseudoepigraphs written by Gnostic authors.


 * I have also removed some gospel references, though I left them in comments. I think this article needs to be reorganized.  The article can't seem to decide if it merely wishes to discuss how the Priory of Sion is portrayed in the Da Vinci Code, or if it wants to debunk the book.


 * Maybe the article ought to be "portrayal of The Priory of Sion in the Da Vinci Code", and leave the debunking of the secret dossiers to Dossiers Secrets and Priory of Sion. All the articles related to this topic (including the articles on the hoaxers) are confusing. --SV Resolution(Talk) 20:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Rectified a mistake and included an addition
Hi,

The reference to Isis in the Priory Documents is from 'Le Serpent Rouge' and not from the 'Dossiers Secrets'.

I linked the name of Gerard de Sede to the Wikipedia article about him.

I added the following source about Plantard:

Quoting Pierre Plantard: "I admit that 'The Sacred Enigma' (French title for 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail') is a good book, but one must say that there is a part that owes more to fiction than to fact, especially in the part that deals with the lineage of Jesus. How can you prove a lineage of four centuries from Jesus to the Merovingians? I have never put myself forward as a descendant of Jesus Christ" (Jacques Pradel radio interview on 'France-Inter', 18 February 1982).

Wfgh66 15:35, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Holy Blood
The article says, "As is generally recognized, one of the prime inspirations for The Da Vinci Code is the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh," and similar things in various places. While one would have to be an idiot or a madman not to recognize this, there may be a problem saying so on Wikipedia.

Dan Brown has denied that either he or his wife read Holy Blood. Apparently "encoding" the names of the authors in his character, putting a book of the same name in his book, and taking their entire plot was just some bizarre coincidence. This could be dismissed were it not for the fact that he won a plagiarism lawsuit. It's clear that he won this lawsuit because (a) Baigent and Leigh had labeled their book non-fiction, and therefore couldn't accuse him of stealing their fictional plot, and (b) copyright only protects actual texts, not ideas. Nevertheless, he clearly views it as a vindication. (He also appears to view Baigent and Leigh as serious historians, which is almost funny, but ultimately just sad.)

This means it might be problematic for Wikipedia to state or imply that Brown ripped off the book, as he believes that he has a legal judgment proving that he didn't. --76.200.101.170 (talk) 16:06, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced material/OR in need of sourcing
I am moving the following unsourced material here from the article until it can be properly sourced per WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:IRS, WP:SECONDARY, etc. Nightscream (talk) 03:33, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

History and membership of the Priory
In a short preface, Brown declares: "FACT: The Priory of Sion, a European secret society founded in 1099, is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sandro Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci." This document had been introduced into the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1967 by Pierre Plantard who had the help of Philippe de Chérisey in creating the parchments, and of Gérard de Sède in developing the idea of the Priory of Sion. De Sède also published, beginning in 1967, several books claiming that other information about the Priory of Sion had been discovered elsewhere in France.

In The Da Vinci Code, this age and pedigree of the Priory are treated as incontrovertible facts. The protagonist, Harvard professor Robert Langdon, relates much of the lore relating to the Priory. In Chapter 48, it is said that "the Dossiers Secrets had been authenticated by many specialists and incontrovertibly confirmed" that the famous people listed were indeed former Priory leaders" something "historians had suspected for a long time."

Following the lead of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and thus indirectly the Dossiers Secrets, Brown presents the Priory of Sion as a widespread and influential organization: "They are based...in France and attract powerful members from all over Europe. In fact, they are one of the oldest surviving secret societies on earth" (chapter 23). When Priory members gather for a secret ceremony, the driveway outside the house is full of expensive cars: "from the looks of the automobiles, some of Paris's most influential people were in attendance" (Chapter 32).

The organizational structure of Brown's version of the Priory is as described in the Dossiers: it has a Nautonnier or Grand Master who has three Sénéchaux below him. As part of the plot of the novel, all four are murdered.

Nature and purpose of the Priory
Regarding the exact purpose of the Priory, Dan Brown to some extent departs from the conclusions presented in Holy Blood, Holy Grail. In this otherwise important "source book" for Brown's novel, authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln concluded that the Priory works behind the scenes to restore a descendant of the Merovingians to the throne of France (the exact impression Plantard wanted to convey). The three authors also reached the remarkable conclusion that Merovingian line was so important because the Merovingians were descendants of the historical Jesus and his supposed wife Mary Magdalene. The authors speculated that the Priory wants to create a "United States of Europe" ruled by a sacred king descended from Jesus.

Brown did work into his plot Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln's theories regarding the ultimate "secret" of the Priory (Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, producing a sacred bloodline that survives into modern times). The involvement of the Merovingian dynasty is also mentioned, but the notion that the Priory is scheming to unite Europe under a sacred king is notably missing from Brown's novel. It may be that the novelist deemed this would be of less interest to the American audience he primarily had in mind.

Instead Brown found further inspiration in other works of the "genre" spawned by Holy Blood, Holy Grail, primarily The Templar Revelation by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, as well as the mystical feminism of Margaret Starbird. Selecting and fusing together certain elements of their theories, Brown came up with a version of the Priory that is greatly concerned with the "sacred feminine" supposedly suppressed by traditional Christianity: "The Priory has a well-documented history of reverence for the sacred feminine...[they are] the pagan goddess worship cult" (Chapter 23 of the novel). Since "Jesus was the original feminist" (Chapter 58), it follows that the Church has distorted his "true" message, now only preserved by the Priory of Sion. Moreover, Jesus wanted his "wife" Mary Magdalene rather than Saint Peter to be the head of the Church. Ousted by the emerging patriarchy, the Magdalene took the child she had with Jesus and escaped to France, where she lived out her days. One of her descendants founded the Priory, that still guards her earthly remains and a set of ancient documents setting out Jesus' original, uncorrupted doctrine: This is the real Holy Grail, which must be kept forever hidden from the patriarchal Church seeking to destroy it.

Controversy and legal suits
In 2005, UK TV channels aired a detailed rebuttal of the main arguments of Dan Brown and those of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln: The Real Da Vinci Code, shown on Channel 4. Narrated by amateur TV historian and archaeologist Tony Robinson, the program featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists. Arnaud de Sède, son of Gérard de Sède, stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the story of the Priory of Sion. "Frankly", Arnaud de Sède stated in the program, "it was piffle." The program also examined the alleged expatriation of Mary Magdalene to France and any connection between the Merovingians and Jesus.